Throughout the entirety of this semester, my approach to these blog posts has been...unique, to say the least. It was a not so subtle attempt at breaking the monotony that was bound to transcend when a lot of people have to do the same thing, in the same manner, during the same time period. Where the majority of the class followed a pretty standard informative short-format blog, I rambled for almost (if not over) a thousand words per post. Not only that, but instead of going with the professional, clean-cut tone that most of my classmates adopted, I tried to venture into a satirical - if not completely informal - tone that left a lot to be desired in terms of professionalism.
So, yes, if this was a job, and I was in charge of branded content, I would be five miles out the door by now. But, the thing is, my blogs were distinguishable from the rest. Now I am not saying they were better than anyone else's (truth be told, there were some people who just had an outright knack for blogs), but what I am saying is that if someone were to say "hey did you see that weird guy posted another cringey blog trying to be funny?" pretty much anyone who so much as glanced over my blogs would know exactly what they were talking about. So even though they weren't the most informative, or the most well-written, they were by far the weirdest - and for that reason, the most distinguishable.
So now imagine that you're in the real world, working in marketing firm xyz, and you get put in charge of SEO content for a couple of the firm's accounts. It will most likely be clients, with brands, and with branded products like the other tens of thousands of brands in the world. Now you might be an SEO wizard with a creative writing masters from Colombia, and you might write the best darn SEO content that Google has ever had the privilege to lay its algorithm on, but at the end of the day, if you can't differentiate from your competitors, it barely makes a difference. It might bring you to the top of the search for Google, but the content will look - and feel - just like that of all your competitors. Because everyone is doing blogs right now, with the same tone, "witty" remarks, and convoluted linking plan. Everyone is doing the same thing, in the same manner, during the same time period. So even if you're doing it better than everyone else, at the end of the day it'll just blend in, and your beautiful content will get lost in the eyes of the consumer.
Bottom line is, pick up a Dave Barry book and learn to write cringey, outdated humor into your content. Or maybe don't do that. Maybe write your content in Haiku format, but also do it in secret code. Or maybe, if you're catering to a niche market, go all-in and tear it up with nothing but internal references and jokes that only true fans of the product/brand will understand. Maybe if you're stuck writing content for something super strict and formal like financial advisors, start looking for a different job. The point is, differentiate! The market is only going to become more saturated with content, and with each day that passes dozens of newly-graduate students are getting converted into monotone, soulless content-making machines. You don't have to be the weird dude who tries to be funny in his class' blogs, but what you can be is the site that everyone in the target market knows and talks about because your content is so fresh and engaging.
Digital marketing largely revolves around data analysis and back-end decisions, but without a creative implementation that stands out from the rest, it might as well all be for nothing.
